The Bracelet by Yoshiko Uchida, illustrated by Joanna Yardley (Philomel Books, 1993) recounts the story of a Japanese American girl named Emi.  It is 1942 and Emi is about to leave her home in San Francisco for an internment camp further inland.  It is an uncertain and precarious time.  Just before Emi’s departure, her friend Laurie Madison shows up at the door with a gift.  It is a heart bracelet.  Emi receives the gift gladly, swearing that she will “never, ever take it off.”  But in the hustle and bustle of the move, Emi loses the bracelet and for the first time, despite all the other difficulties she has faced with her family during their ordeal, she wants to cry.  Will she recover the bracelet?  Or rather, what will she do if she doesn’t?

I read this story to my daughter, expecting a certain sort of ending and getting another one, and this was what surprised me about this book.  Emi has an epiphany about her lost bracelet that is both simple and profound.  Objects are not the repositories of our memories; our minds are.  Despite the loss of the bracelet, Emi knows that she will never forget the friendship she had with Laurie and this is an important truth for Emi to realize about herself and her situation.  Illustrator Joanna Yardley has done a wonderful job of depicting a very realistic-looking Emi as a shy and contemplative girl; I was especially struck by an image of her face in which the details are very fine, right down to Emi’s eyelashes.

Reading this book gave me an opportunity to explain to my daughter that Emi’s experience was similar to those of her grandfather’s and my great aunt’s.  She herself made the connection and I elaborated a little on the differences between the Canadian and American experiences.  I knew about Yoshiko Uchida’s childrens’ books on the topic from before but this book made me want to seek out more by her!

Recently, a poet friend who has a blog called Capacious Hold-All, linked to a children’s book related to her post about red purses.  Curious about the book she linked to, I took it out of the library.  The story is called The Magic Purse and is a Japanese folktale.  Retold by Yoshiko Uchida, the story is illustrated in watercolors by Keiko Narahashi.  Similar to the folktale I posted about last time, The Magic Purse features a virtuous man who is faced with a choice.  In this story,  he is given a red purse from a young woman-spirit living in a swamp separated from her parents.  The little red purse is magic.  Bulging with gold coins, it will always replenish itself after the coins have been removed if one coin is left in it.  The young man is charged with a task, however.  He must deliver a letter from the daughter to the girls’ parents who live in a notoriously treacherous swamp called the Red Swamp.  Will the young man undertake this dangerous quest even though he has already received the magic purse?  And how will he use the magic purse?  In a way the purse and its boon, as well as the task he is charged with in receiving it, tests the mettle of the man.

My daughter enjoyed listening to this folktale.  Of course, the swamp part of the story was a little frightening for her.  Folktales often present risks not just to the story’s heroes, but to the parents who must read them to their children!  However, my daughter did realize afterwards that part of experiencing the fear of the hero of the story entering the swamp is what made the story so compelling compared to other books we read that night.

Do you read folktales to your children?  If so, how do you choose them?  Which ones have your children enjoyed?